1. Field
The following description relates to location recognition and location-based service provision.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the wide use of global positioning system (GPS)-equipped wireless terminals, such as smartphones, tablet PCs, and the like, an increasing number of various location-based services have been provided. Representative examples of such services are navigation systems that utilize coordinate information obtained in real time from signals from GPS satellites and augmented reality (AR) mobile applications that provide surrounding information. Recently, with the help of an access point (AP) of a wireless local area network (WLAN), the application of location-based services has expanded to radio shadow areas and interior areas where it is not possible to receive GPS signals.
Currently available location-based services store absolute location information of buildings or fixed objects in a database, and unconditionally provide information about buildings and objects around a terminal user based on a location of the terminal. Such conventional service provision methods require service providers to store a massive amount of information in a DB and constantly update changes in surrounding information. In addition, users are not able to obtain information about buildings and objects which are not present in the DB of the service providers. Moreover, it is difficult to provide application services that allow the mutual transmission and reception of information between the user's terminal and other terminals in the proximity of the user based on location information of the other terminals. Furthermore, in pattern matching scheme, in which an image captured by a user is compared with image patterns of objects stored in a DB as communication target candidates and a similarity therebetween is detected, the recognition of images may be difficult since the images are sensitive to lighting and weather conditions.